Jenae Cohn, PhD

Some Things that Made Me Think in 2025 In 2025, I listened more than I spoke. That's partially because I still don't really know how to balance being a present parent for a toddler, a leader for my team, a thoughtful contributor to public ...

In 2025, I listened more than I spoke. And since my blog is kind of in a frozen state because I need to overhaul it completely, I used LinkedIn (yuck, I know) to reflect on some things I liked reading and listening to this year: www.linkedin.com/pulse/some-t...

We are only going to get through this with greater collaboration. The siloes between instructors who teach in the classrooms and the staff who make technology decisions are far too wide and gaping. The chickens have come to roost. (7/7)

These are my gut reaction thoughts, but I think one action item instructors really should consider taking is form greater partnership with instructional staff, from CTLs to IT units to accessibility divisions. I know I'm biased since my career is as academic staff, BUT (6/7)

Seeing the institutional abdication of respect for instructor agency, the selection of design tools that undermine authentic personalization, makes me queasy. Students are going to have even more homogenized instructional experiences online. That will make online edu worse on the whole. (5/7)

And this universal integration of AI functionality is just going to accelerate the flattening (the "enshittification," per Cory Doctorow, if you will) of online educational experiences in particular. I'm a big enthusiast for online learning (I've written two books about it!!), but... (4/7)

The Canvas monopoly is troubling b/c I see how fundamentally it has reshaped instruction. So many courses are cookie-cutter. While many of Canvas's design decisions are effective (chunking content into modules, e.g.), many are hierarchical at best, destructive to student agency at worst. (3/7)

My academic tech career has meant often encouraging usage of the LMS for a number of obvious reasons: it's free, secure, and accessible to students. Yet the LMS market has shrunk considerably in my 10+ years in higher ed. I can only think of a handful of institutions that don't use Canvas. (2/7)

Ted's thread brings up so many tremendous points about the erosion of instructor agency as the LMS perniciously adopts a bunch of AI. The LMS is a fascinating piece of edtech. It's simultaneously so mediocre and yet so powerful for organizing instructional logic. Essential, but inadequate. (1/7)

Launch Coyote Media Collective A new alt-weekly-style publication is hitting the Bay Area

Introducing COYOTE Media Collective!! The Bay Area’s first journalist-owned newsroom — modeled after the smart, sassy, fun alt-weeklies of yore — is launching later this summer. Help us get this rad project off the ground! @coyotemedia.org

givebutter.com/coyotemedia

#NoKings El Cerrito!! Probably 300-500 people here at least in our small East Bay suburb. 💛

Rhet & comp pals: I'm trying to find a free online resource w/ foundational advice abt giving students feedback, but was finding a lot of things are feeling very dated (I used to rely on WAC Clearinghouse). What are the resources you're liking most for advice on response to student writing?

I hope it's useful to you!!!

Worried about getting students to do the reading this semester? I've curated some resources for the UVA Teaching Hub just in time for the start of Spring. Gratitude to @derekbruff.bsky.social for curating these excellent collections!

3. What does it look like to resist the linguistic homogenization that LLM usage may reinforce? (5/5)

2. How do we discourage the surveillance logic inherent in requiring proof of seeing drafts? (e.g. I'm noticing that many instructors are asking for proof of drafting in the form of submitting evidence of writing logs and revisions in Google Docs, which is fairly invasive!) (4/5)

1. What does it look like to shift perspectives on writing across the curriculum to help educators of all disciplines recognize what it means to design writing assignments that go beyond "the transactional?" (3/5)

This fire rhetoric courtesy of @rcmeg.bsky.social, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, and Maggie Fernandes. Anyone who thinks about writing instruction (whether you're in the field of writing studies or not) should absolutely read this! This essay had me thinking of several follow-up questions... (2/5)

Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies Visit the post for more.

"We must recognize the harms that will result when writing is primarily treated as a tool to transcribe answers, including its implications for critical thinking, democratic decision-making, and linguistic variation and expression.” 🔥

refusinggenai.wordpress.com

(1/5)

Anyway, LOTS more to say here and many more questions to explore, but I was grateful for the ways that these articles tackled my increasing discomfort at celebrations over AI "solutions" that don't appear to be solving real "problems," but are, instead, undermining pedagogical expertise. (8/8)

Example: AI is touted as a solution for instructional "efficiency" (something both Beck and Warner speak to). "Tedious" tasks like grading are cited most frequently. But is the problem with grading that it's "tedious?" Or is the problem that grading is tedious when it's poorly designed? (7/8)

If instructors don't have clear articulations of teaching challenges they're trying to solve AND if administrators are out of touch with teaching challenges, then there's a perfect vacuum for edtech solutions to swoop in and respond to ghosts of problems (6/8)

The question university administrators & instructors alike should ask when considering ANY edtech adoption (and this feels particularly acute with AI) is: "what teaching problem are we trying to solve? So much edtech is a solution in search of a problem. (5/8)

Something I've long seen as a problem with how universities talk about edtech is that it's often in significantly binarized and instrumentalist terms. So much edtech integration is focused on the wrong questions of "what does the technology do?" That's almost always the wrong question (4/8)

I enjoyed reading these pieces together since they brought up a few core lingering questions for me. What *are* the core teaching values that we can agree we must preserve as core to the teaching mission? And how can those core values be communicated persuasively, clearly, and repeatedly? (3/8)

2. @esteebeck.bsky.social's excellent & thoughtful piece on how NTT and graduate students can simultaneously resist extractive uses of GenAI while still leveraging digital platforms (and, yes, even chatbots!) to organize: cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/practic... (2/8)

Great ready for faculty bot-ification If we want there to be such a thing as college faculty, that is.

I recommend reading these 2 articles side-by-side on how higher ed instructors can protect their value in the face of threats to substitute valuable teaching labor with AI: 1. @biblioracle.bsky.social's take on getting faculty ready for "botification" www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog... and (1/8)

Three questions on "Beyond 'Zoom University'" A conversation with Jenae Cohn on her chapter in Recentering Learning.

Delighted to chat with Joshua Kim about my chapter in "Recentering Learning!" I give a teaser on my chapter, reflect on the value of re-centering "joy" when you re-center learning at a research university, and tackle the big, bad "what about AI" question. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blog...

Recentering Learning Is a renaissance of teaching and learning in higher education possible? One may already be underway.The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how colleges and universities manage teaching and learni...

This whole book includes QUITE the collection of expert perspectives: @derekbruff.bsky.social, @edufuturist.bsky.social, @katinalynn.bsky.social, among many others not on Bluesky! Check it out here: www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

The book Recentering Learning has a blue cover with images of rippling water and is placed next to a coffee cup and a laptop on a table.

Delighted to receive my copy of "Recentering Learning!" My chapter, "Beyond Zoom University" makes the case that we need to think flexibly about the future of where and how learning happens with a nifty heuristic for designing digital pedagogy from a student-first perspective. #edusky

I've admittedly been mired in the world of endless learning as a new parent, but there's much to think about when it comes to the future of teaching and uplifting instructors. It really does feel like a coming home to see so many familiar ex-Twitter friends now here. 🐦 (5/5)